Samson 01 - Berlin Game, page 14
‘And talking to Joseph Goebbels at the bar of the Kaiserhof,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’ve heard all those stories. I couldn’t get enough of your dad’s yarns when I was young. I saw a lot of him in those days when he was behind the bar at List’s.’ From the next apartment there came the incessant sound of police sirens, shooting and the joyful shouts of children watching TV. Axel went across to the wall and thumped on it with the flat of his hand. This had no effect other than to make some of the plastic flowers quiver.
Axel shrugged at the continuing noise. ‘And working for your dad too. Suppose they find out that he used to do those jobs for your dad? They’d throw him straight into prison.’
‘Don’t baby him, Axel. Rolfs a tough old bastard. He can look after himself.’
Axel nodded. ‘So I said, “If you think you’ll recapture your youth by going across the city, Dad, you go. And, take Tante Lisl with you… . ” When my mother was alive, she wouldn’t listen to all those stories of his. She’d just tell him to shut up.’
‘Well, he found a ready audience at that bar.’
‘He was always complaining about working for Tante Lisl, wasn’t he? But he loved standing behind the bar talking about “the real Berlin”, in the days when there was a respect for Christian values - eine christliche Weltanschauung. And after a few customers had bought him drinks, he’d be talking about the Kaiserzeit as if he’d been a general in the first war instead of an artillery captain in the second.’ Axel drank some beer. There’s no fool like an old fool,’ he said with unexpected vehemence, and looked at his beer so that I could not see his eyes. ‘I’d hate anything to happen to him, Bernd.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But don’t worry about him. He’s over sixty-five, so he is permitted to visit the West.’
‘He sees Werner sometimes.’ He looked at me. ‘They’re in some kind of racket together.’
It was more a question than a statement. ‘Are they?’
‘Are you still with the Army intelligence people?’
I nodded. It was my cover story for Berliners such as Axel who remembered my father and had seen me coming and going, and had given me the use of their sofas and their motorcars from time to time. It was not the sort of cover story that earned respect from Germans. Germany is the only country in the world where a job in any sort of intelligence-gathering organization is considered little better than pimping. It is a product of the postwar years when informers were everywhere.
‘You’re not after Dad?’
‘Stop worrying about him, Axel,’ I said. ‘Rolf came right through the war, and then survived through the years that followed the war. I’m sure he’s doing fine. In fact, I might be able to look him up next time I go into the East Sector. I’ll take him something, if you like.’
‘So what’s it all about, Bernd?’ said Axel. He got up and went to the window, staring eastwards to where the spike of the East German TV tower rose out of the Alexanderplatz. Once it was the heart of the city, where pedestrians dodged bikes, bikes dodged cars, and cars dodged the trams that came through a five-way intersection at frightening speeds. Now the traffic had vanished and the ‘Alex’ was just an orderly concrete expanse, with red flags, flower boxes and slogans. ‘You might as well come out with it,’ said Axel, still staring out the window.
‘With what?’
‘It’s nice to see you again, Bernd. But you work out of London nowadays, you say. With only a couple of days in the city and lots of old friends to visit, you didn’t come to my little place to talk about how well I did in my chemistry exams, and have a can of beer - which I notice you drink very very slowly, as policemen do when they are on duty - and be interrupted by the shouting of the kids next door, and sit close to the heating because I can’t afford to turn it up any higher. You must have had a reason to come here, and I think you are going to ask me a favour.’
‘Remember a couple of years ago when I was looking for that kid who’d stolen a briefcase from an office near the Zoo station?’
‘You asked me to look up a post-office box number and tell you who rented it. But that was an official request. That came through the British Army.’
‘This one is more delicate, Axel.’ I took from my pocket the envelope that Frank Harrington had left in my street guide. Axel took it reluctantly; even then he didn’t immediately look at it. ‘It’s urgent, I suppose? These things are always urgent.’ He read the address.
‘It is, Axel. Otherwise I could have gone through the post office.’
He laughed scornfully. ‘Have you tried getting anything out of our wonderful post office lately? Last week it took them four days to deliver a letter from a postbox in Tiergarten, and then it was nearly torn in two. And the price for a letter now… .‘He read the numbers that were the address. ‘One thousand is Berlin and twenty-eight is Lübars.’
‘You said Polizeipräsidium kept copies of the forms the box renters sign. Could you get the name and address of the person who rents that box at Lubars post office? Could you get it even on a Saturday?’
‘I’ll phone from the bedroom.’
Thanks, Axel.’
‘It depends who’s on duty this morning. I can’t order anyone to do it. It’s strictly forbidden … it’s a criminal offence.’
‘If I could clear up the inquiry immediately, I could go home.’
‘We all thought you’d grow up to become a gangster,’ said Axel. ‘Did I ever tell you that?’
‘Yes, Axel. You’ve told me that many times.’
‘We asked Herrn Storch, the mathematics teacher, but he said all the English were like you.’
‘Some of them are worse, Axel,’ I said.
He didn’t laugh; he nodded. He wanted me to know how much he disliked it. He wanted me to think twice before I asked him more such favours. When he went into the bedroom to phone, he turned the key in the door. He wanted to be sure that I could not get close enough to hear him.
The call took only five minutes. I suppose the Polizeipräsidium have such records on a computer.
‘The addressee, Mrs Harrington, is the renter of the box. She gave no an address in Lübars,’ said Axel when he returned from the phone. ‘I know exactly where it is. It’s a street of beautiful houses with a view across open farmland. What wouldn’t I give to live in such a place.’
‘How difficult is it to get a postbox in a false name?’ I asked.
‘It depends who is on duty. But you don’t have to provide much to get it in any name you wish. Many people have boxes under a nom de plume or a stage name, and so on.’
‘I have not been to Lübars since we were kids. Is it still as pretty as it used to be?’
‘Lübars village. We’re quite close. If this window faced north, I could show you the street. They’ve preserved everything: the little eighteenth-century village church, the fire station and the village green with the fine chestnut trees. The farmhouses and the old inn. It’s just a stone’s throw away but it’s like another world.’
‘I’ll get going, Axel,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the beer.’
‘And what if on Monday they fire me? What then? You say how really sorry you are, and I spend the rest of my life trying to support a family on social welfare payments.’
I said nothing.
‘You’re irresponsible, Bernd. You always were.’
I would have expected Frank Harrington to have his mistress hidden away in a small anonymous apartment block somewhere in the French Sector of the city where no one notices what’s happening. But the address Axel Mauser had provided was in the northernmost part of the Western Sector, a prong of land sandwiched between the Tegel Forest and the Wall. There were small farms here just a short way from the city centre, and tractors were parked on the narrow cobbled lanes among the shiny Porsches and four-litre Mercedes.
The big family houses were designed to look as though they’d been here since Bismarck, but they were too flawless to be anything but reconstructions. I cruised slowly down an elegant tree-lined road following three children on well-groomed ponies. It was neat and tidy and characterless, like those Hollywood back lots designed to look like anywhere old and foreign.
Number 40 was a narrow two-storey house, with a front garden big enough for two large trees and with a lot of empty space behind it. There was a sign on the chain fence, bellevue kennels, and another that said beware of the dogs in three languages, including German. Even before I’d read it, the dogs began barking. They sounded like very big dogs.
Once through the inner gate, I could see a wired compound and a brick outbuilding where some dogs were crowding at the gate trying to get out. ‘Good dog,’ I said, but I don’t think they heard me.
A young woman came from somewhere at the back of the house. She was about twenty-two years old, with soft grey eyes, a tanned sort of complexion, and jet-black hair drawn back into a bun. She was wearing khaki-coloured cotton pants, and a matching shirt with shoulder tabs and button-down pockets. It was all tailored to fit very tight. Over it she had a sleeveless sheepskin jacket - fleece inwards - with the sort of bright flower-patterned embroidery that used to be a status symbol for hippies.
She looked me up and down long enough to recognize my Burberry trench coat and Professor Higgins hat. ‘Did you come to buy a dog?’ she said in good English.
‘Yes,’ I said immediately.
‘We only have German shepherds.’
‘I like German shepherds.’ A big specimen of this breed emerged from the house. It came within six feet of us, looked at the woman, before hunching its shoulders and growling menacingly at me.
‘You didn’t come to buy a dog,’ she said, looking at my face. Whatever she saw there amused her, for she smiled to show perfect white teeth. So did the dog.
‘I’m a friend of Frank’s,’ I said.
‘Of my Frank?’
‘There’s only one Frank,’ I said. She smiled as if that were a joke.
‘Has anything - ?’
‘No, Frank is fine,’ I said. ‘In fact, he doesn’t even know I’ve come to see you.’
She’d been peering at me with eyes half closed, and now suddenly she opened her mouth and gave a soft shout of surprise. ‘You’re Werner’s English friend, aren’t you?’
We looked at each other, momentarily silenced by our mutual surprise. ‘Yes, I am, Mrs Volkmann,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t come here to talk about Werner.’
She looked around to see if her neighbours were in their garden listening. But her neighbours were all safely behind their double-glazing. ‘I can’t remember your name but you are the Englishman who went to school with Werner… . Your German is perfect,’ she said, and changed into that language. ‘No need for us to speak English. I’ll put Rudolf in the run and then we’ll go inside and have coffee. It’s made already.’ Rudolf growled. He did not want to go into the run unless he took me with him.
‘During the week, I have a girl to help me,’ said Mrs Zena Volkmann while Rudolf submitted meekly to being pushed into the wired compound. ‘But at the weekend it is impossible to get anyone at any price. They say there is unemployment but people just don’t want to work, that’s the trouble.’ Now her accent was more distinct. Ostelbisch: Germans from anywhere east of the River Elbe. Everyone agrees it is not pejorative, but I never heard anyone say it except people who came from west of the River Elbe.
We entered the house through a pantry. Arranged in rows upon a purring freezer were twelve coloured plastic bowls containing measured amounts of bread and chopped meat. There was a mop and bucket in the corner, a steel sink unit and shelves with tins of dog food, and choke chains and collars hanging from a row of hooks on the wall. ‘I can’t go out for more than an hour or two because the puppies have to be fed four times a day. Two litters. One lot are only four weeks old and they need constant attention. And I’m waiting for another litter any day now. I wouldn’t have started it all if I’d known what it was like.’
She went up a step and opened the door into the kitchen. There was the wonderful smell of freshly made coffee. There was no sign of anything connected with the dogs. The kitchen was almost unnaturally clean and tidy, with gleaming racks of saucepans, and glassware sparkling inside a cabinet.
She snapped off the switch of the automatic coffee-maker, grabbed the jug from the hot plate, put an extra cup and saucer on the tray, and tipped some biscuits onto a matching plate. The cup was as big as a bowl and decorated with the inevitable large brightly coloured flowers. We went to sit in the back room. The rear part of the house had been altered at some time to incorporate a huge window. It gave a panoramic view of a piece of farmland beyond the dog enclosures. There was a tractor making its way slowly across the field, disturbing a flock of rooks searching for food in the brown tilled earth. Only the grey line of the Wall marred this pastoral scene. ‘You get used to it,’ said Mrs Volkmann, as if in reply to the question that every visitor asked.
‘Not everyone does,’ I said.
She took a packet of cigarettes from the table, lit one and inhaled before replying. ‘My grandfather had a farm in East Prussia,’ she said. ‘He came here once and couldn’t stop looking at the Wall. His farm was nearly eight hundred kilometres from here but that was still Germany. Do you know how far from here Poland is now? Less than sixty. That’s what Hitler did for us. He made Germany into the sort of tiny second-rate little country that he so despised.’
‘Shall I pour out the coffee?’ I said. ‘It smells good.’
‘My father was a schoolteacher. He made us children learn history. He said it would prevent the same things happening again.’ She smiled. There was no humour in it; it was a small, polite, modest smile, the sort of smile you see models wearing in advertisements for expensive watches.
‘Let’s hope so,’ I said.
‘It will not prevent the same things happening. Look at the world. Can’t you see Hitlers all round us? There is no difference between Hitler Germany and Andropov Russia. A hammer and sickle can look very like a swastika, especially when it is flying over your head.’ She picked up the coffee I’d poured for her. I watched her carefully; there was a lot of hostility in her, even if it was hidden under her smiles and hospitality. ‘Werner wants me back,’ she said.
‘He knows nothing of my coming here,’ I said.
‘But he told you where to find me?’
‘Are you frightened of him?’ I said.
‘I don’t want to go back to him.’
‘He thinks you are living in Munich. He thinks you ran away with a Coca-Cola truck driver.’
‘That was just a boy I knew.’
‘He doesn’t know you’re still here in Berlin,’ I said. I was trying to reassure her.
‘I never go downtown. Anything I need from the big department stores I have delivered. I’m frightened I’ll bump into him in the food department of KaDeWe. Does he still go there and eat lunch?’
‘Yes, he still goes there.’
‘Then why did Frank tell you where I was?’
‘Frank Harrington didn’t tell me.’
‘You just worked it out?’ she said sarcastically.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I worked it out. There’s nothing very difficult about finding people these days. There are bank balances, credit cards, charge accounts, car licences, driving licences. If Werner had guessed you were living in the city, he would have found you much more quickly than I did. Werner is an expert at finding people.’
‘I write postcards and have a friend of mine post them from Munich.’
I nodded. Could a professional like Werner really fall for such amateur tricks?
I looked round the room. There were a couple of Berliner Ensemble theatre posters framed on the wall and a Käthe Kollwitz lithograph. The fluffy carpet was cream and the soft furnishings were covered in natural-finish linen with orange-coloured silk cushions. It was flashy but very comfortable - no little plastic bowls or gnawed bones, no sign anywhere of the existence of the dogs. I suppose it would have to be like that for Frank Harrington. He was not the sort of man who would adapt readily to smelly austerity. Through the sliding doors I glimpsed a large mahogany dining table set with a cut-glass bowl and silver centrepiece. The largest room had been chosen for dining. I wondered who came along here and enjoyed discreet dinners with Frank and his young mistress.
‘It’s not a permanent arrangement,’ said Mrs Volkmann. ‘Frank and I - we are close, very close. But it’s not permanent. When he goes back to London, it will be all over. We both knew that right from the start.’ She took a biscuit and nibbled at it in a way that would show her perfect white teeth.
‘Is Frank going back to London?’ I said.
She’d been sitting well forward on the big soft sofa, but now she banged a fist into a silk cushion before putting it behind her and resting against it. ‘His wife would like him to get promoted. She knows that a posting to London would break up his affair with me. She doesn’t care about Frank’s promotion except that it would get him away from Berlin and away from me.’
‘Wives are like that,’ I said.
‘But I won’t go back to Werner. Frank likes to think I’d go back to Werner if and when that happens. But I’ll never go back.’
‘Why does Frank like to think that? Frank hates Werner.’
‘Frank feels guilty about taking me away from Werner. At first, he really worried about it. That sort of guilty feeling often turns into hatred. You know that.’ She smiled and smoothed her sleeve with a sensuous gesture, trailing her fingertips down her arm. She was a very beautiful woman. ‘I get so bored at weekends,’ she said.
